


UNGUIBUS ET ROSTRO

by jvhnkeats



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-10-10 23:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10450308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jvhnkeats/pseuds/jvhnkeats
Summary: Nobody ever told Adam Parrish that he was destined for greatness. Nobody told him anything but how despicable was his own name. Bruised cheeks, wounded soul, and still a gaze as bright and brave as a full moon night. Perhaps his fortuitous encounter with Richard Gansey III, heir one of the greater fortunes of Wales, is the impulse he needs to start fighting the way to his own fate.Crows and swords, crowns and kings. Legends and whispers. Some stories need magic to be awaken. Some heroes are born damned.





	1. I. THE BLEEDING LANCE: on names written in dust

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this as a result of my own disappointment at the untapped potential of many symbols and references to the Arthurian legends presented during the saga. Therefore, and obviating the fact that I have set it in the Middle Ages, it is very likely that the plot differs in almost everything with that developed in the books. It is a little absurd to warn my readers of this (this is a fanfic, after all), but I felt the need to do it so that they know what they can expect or not. It is not exactly an adaptation of the four books, but my own interpretation of said books. Enjoy as much as you can.  
> IMPORTANT BONUS: there's no rovinsky here, not even past-rovinsky bullshit. Even when a past relationship is mentioned, it is not meant to be a romantic one. Stop shipping abusive relationships 2k17. Thank you very much.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When I first entered Henrietta, I thought it was too big for my ambitions."  
> After running away from his parents, Adam Parrish finds himself lost in the world. His arrival to Henrietta, as well as his job at the smithy, seems to dispel all doubts about his future: he will work his ways to an early and unremembered death, without glory, without mourning. Meanwhile, he admires from afar the glowing image of Lord Aglionby's pages, young noblemen residing in the castle near the town.

I never wanted a name. Never desired its rough forms, what it means to be someone, to be found, to be known. Even today I have the impression that I have inhabited for so long the shadow of somebody else’s space, which was given to me instead of a reason for all this pain and all this strangeness that is my own conscience. No one said that I would be unable to escape my own damnation, that is only the curse of my kinfolk.

  
I remember the chariot , like the dried card on my mother’s lap, lumbering the day I came to this world. They used to say I looked like nothing but a handful of dust when they first held me into their arms, when life was already violent, but not harsh yet. Little boy, glass bones, thick blood, a marvelous disgrace.

  
No matter if the moon is dark or if the sky hides its eternal lights to get us lost in the woods, gypsies will wander together until the horizon is no longer a border but a motherland. And I knew that and I knew it wounded my heart the way my father approached me with his bare hands as big as hell and his eyes glittering in anger, but I couldn’t admit that. My hate was mine and mine only. I wished for forgiveness —no God could hurt me after that, no saint could touch me. He had lost his faith a long time before he beat my soul out for the first time. “Father forgive me for I have sinned…” I don’t know if they despised me as deeply as I wanted to love them. My mother cried at night, and I listened to my father’s heavy breath and prayed, and hoped she could leave his side someday. We could have ridden through the stars and let dawn shallow us whole. Only then, we would have been saved.

 

  
I ran away when I was fifteen and I left a trace of bruises and tears on every corner, on every stone, on every road I crossed. I didn’t feel guilty. My mother’s eyes would drop dead, and my father would be buried with his mouth pressed tight against the rye. I only regret stealing my name from them, for I have had to carry it alongside my way, feeling its painful scar among my shoulders. Oh, how miserable I felt on the edge of night, a lone gypsy with nothing in his pockets but the weight of my closed fits! This young and already blighted by tears! My name, my name, that will be made of wicker and mud until the coffin lid silence me forever.

  
Adam Parrish. Pit fires, knives wounding the moon, blackened earth, stubble and sand. Son of a snake, scion of the land of gods and monsters.

 

I walked until my body ached and my lungs felt like a rotting fire. When I first entered Henrietta, I thought it was too big for my ambitions. Cloak walls, empty windows, heavy clouds hiding the sun, and I wandered around like a sleepwalker, a trembling kid with trembling knees and a heavy heart. I needed to rest, but top of all I needed something to get moved, alas, a way of surviving. It was the blacksmith who opened the door.

  
"It’s a rough job, kiddo. You'll get bruised."

  
"I am, already. I’ll handle it."

  
The fierce clink of metals, such as a wheel axle breaking in the middle of the road, the roaring crackle of flames; such a violent way to forget oneself. I let the buzz of my thoughts surrender to the movement, the force, the strength. Among the breath of fervent iron, I forget myself. I was still hungry, still restless, but in the eyes of other I was no more than the tool dripping water on swords and knives, the torrid silence between the boiler and the anvil when the fire is gone. The shadow man, the darkest boy in miles, hazel-eyed and mute.

  
I slept with the blacksmith’s children in a big room above the smithy. On Sundays, the blacksmith made us go out into the back yard and the kids bathe all together in a pile of wood. The water was always cold when I finally find the courage to take off my shirt and it was dirty and it slipped through the dark skin like a bloodbath. The little kids asked me about the scars traced over my back, and I smiled softly.

  
"This was my baptism. I was blessed by stones rather than water. It is supposed to make you grow stronger", I told them, when we all huddled together at the local church.

  
"You must came from far, such strange traditions you have there", commented one of the eldest.

  
"Where do you come from, kiddo?", asked the blacksmith.

  
"Nowhere", I murmured, as the sermon began, and wished for that to be true, for my past to disappear as easy as that.

  
But I liked the way those sacred words sounded between my cursed lips. The church’s wall echoed the murmur of souls in catharsis and hundreds of tongues repeating the psalms. On the front pew, the nearest to the preacher, a few figures glowed in the golden twilight of faith. Dressed in velvet and steel, three of them caught my gaze almost instinctively. One, naive and elegant in his ivory forms; the second, fierce and marvelous, darkened by violence and enraptured by his prayers; the third one, decaying. Those kids wore their shining fate on their own skin; children of glory. Lord Aglionby’s pages. Someday, while my body hunched for work, they would carry spears and banners and they would fight noble battles in distant lands. I soon realized how much I envied them, their high spirits and pale cheeks, all that diaphanous life that was given to them without hesitation as soon as they entered this world. I was a dark, disquieting thing, only meant to fade and die.

  
Oh, and how much I hated my own condition, my surrounders, my meager future!

  
The savage boy bumped me as we left the church. His eyes were somehow filled with faith, and he looked at me as if I was some kind of apparition. His jaws seemed made to contain fangs, and he was more a beast than a boy. Obscure and fascinating, raven-like.

  
"Out of our way, pleb", bayed another Aglionby boy.

  
"Don’t be rude, Kavinsky", murmured the elegant one.

  
"Don’t you try to shut me up, dalcop (1). Keep watch over your dog or it’ll mess with the scum which he comes from."

  
"I’m not a dog, gobermouch (2). But you better run or I’ll bite you."

  
As soon as they spoke I knew they haven´t really acknowledged me. I was merely a symbol of something deeper, the roots of what our little village was built upon. It was like we were living in different universes: theirs, made of war and glimmering rooms I would never be allowed into; mine, a simple combination of clay and blood, where everyone leaned on the ground and there was no time for us to observe the sun. They didn’t see me, I almost believed back then that they couldn’t even if they wanted to.  
That was the moment I realized I had ambition. Unlike those around me, I would never be satisfied. Myself wasn’t enough. I wanted their voices, their figures, their shadows, their high, starry eyes.

 

Time passed. I helped the blacksmith by day and I became stronger and stronger every day I passed among the anvils, and I learned how to head down and stay quiet, and how to avoid crossing that world I was forced to ignore if I didn’t want to die from envy.

Summer sun drew freckles over my cheeks and my arms and winter brought beatings from the same kids that only a month ago shared their bread with me. When food is scarce, families stick together and the wanderer becomes a thief. I turned sixteen without anyone noticing.

  
It’s is curious to recall the way fate found me — if fate is still something I, after all this time, can rely on. It was early —too early in the morning for anyone to be awake yet— and as every morning I went to the main square to get some water from the water well. An impatient voice crossed my way, but I noticed the white shine that emanated from him before I could even see the boy’s face. There was probably no halo or any other light phenomena surrounding him at all —it was the absence of dirt, the impossible and ideal difference between him and me what seemed to glow with his mere presence. I looked at him directly in the eyes, because I knew I wasn’t allowed to do so, but there was some kind of strange magic in that action. A proof of devotion, or a promise of deathly-er engagements.

  
"You are one of the blacksmith’s boys, aren’t you?"

  
He seemed desperate. A sorrel struck idly on his right side, presumably asking for his attention.

  
"Not really", I answered, and I hoped that my voice hadn’t trembled that much.

  
"Oh. Well. But you work there, right? At the smithy?"

  
"I do, yes."

  
"Maybe you can help me, then. We were planning on going hunting, but my steed refuses to walk any further. I…think it might have lose a horseshoe. I must warn you, I don’t have a single coin on me."

  
"Let me take a look anyways."

  
Quite so: one of the horseshoe bolts had come loose, scratching the inside of the animal's hoof as soon as it rested on the ground. I took them both back to the smithy. What a rare spectacle, vaguely real, was to see those to soft and elegant figures surrounded by the heavy and hot gloom of the forge. I recognized the lad from the church, the one who used to sit between the almost-gone and the brutally-here page-boys. An unfathomable vision he was even there.  
When I gave him back his horse, he smiled. Joyful and freely, as If I was being gifted with the whole world just by staring back at him. No one, happy or not, smiled like that in the kind of spaces I belonged to, because a smile is something too precious and too exhausting to give away.

  
"Thank you. You are such an amazing creature."

  
"I’ve just did what I was asked to. It was the right thing to do, after all. You were in distress."

  
He tilted his head. He didn't understand. It was too simple for someone like him to understand. He had been born with the thoughts of someone meant for knowing, not doing.

  
"Can I ask your name?"

  
"I’m Adam. Adam Parrish."

  
"Well, Adam Parrish, you can be sure I will return this favour."

  
"There's no need to do that, sir."

  
"Oh, don’t call me sir. Gansey is just fine." He faced me with a grave expression. "Don’t forget that. You’ll hear of me sooner than you expect."

  
Obviating my complaint, he climbed on the back of his horse and left me without any words, but the confused sensation of having witnessed the fall and departure of some kind of angel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes on words  
> (1) cop is an old word for the head, making a dalcop (literally a “dull-head”) a particularly stupid person  
> (2) an old Irish word for a nosy, prying person who likes to interfere in other people’s busines


	2. I. THE BLEEDING LANCE: on names written in clay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hope was a concept still too rare for me to fully understand it, but I guess that was what kept me awake on those cold night when I snuggled on the floor, listening to the drowned breaths of the other boys."  
> After his brief encounter with Gansey, Adam feels time elongated itself as the weeks go by. Until one day a pair of raven boys knock his door.

A week went by, and then another, and the February rains filled the streets with the concentrated odor of mud and standing water. I got used to sitting in a corner of the forge, surrounded by the warm smell of iron and steel slowly rusting in the silence of sunsets. Hope was a concept still too rare for me to fully understand it, but I guess that was what kept me awake on those cold night when I snuggled on the floor, listening to the drowned breaths of the other boys.

  
Finally, when the third week was about to end, a dark figure approached my door. I remember his eyes, cold and astonishing as a summer storm, capable of trespassing flesh, blood and bone without even intending to. His voice sounded harsh as he spoke. The Irish accent, even deeper than my northern mother tongue, made him look as if he belonged to something more ancient and definitely more violent than Earth itself. That pale and somehow golden boy, whose appearance only seemed real if you looked at him close enough to appreciate the vague and delicate structure of his bird-like face, was near behind him when I opened the door.

  
"I’m looking for Adam Parrish."

  
"I’m Adam Parrish."

  
"Fine. Then you’re coming with us. Don’t pack anything."

  
"Is he going to ride with you?" asked the ivory one, who was more kind, or at least more innocent, than the other, directing at him an inquiring glance.

  
"He can walk."

  
"To the castle? You must be kidding, right?"

  
"It’s fine, I…"

  
"Don’t mind him" he replied, with an expression that slightly resembled of a smile. "He is just jealous because now Gansey has his eyes on you instead of on him and him alone" the other boy gave him an annoyed look, but either he wasn’t offended enough to bother denying it, or maybe I was just too insignificant for that statement to matter. "I am Noah, by the way. And my not-so-discretely-upset friend over here is called Ronan."

  
"A foreign name, isn’t it?"

  
"Irish."

  
"Guessed so."

  
He looked at me in such a cold and disinterested way that I was tempted to think of his eyes as a spear much more deadlier than any that would ever be forged in the smithy. My eyes, hazy and brown as the entrails of the wasteland where I was born, had a lot to lose with the comparison. His were blue and carefully veiled as those of who has learned too early that secrets must be kept away. Exposed to the light, they can either rot or become weapons. But how would I have known that then, me, who had spent my short life crawling through the dust with nothing to lose but an identity I never really wanted?

  
"Smart boy, huh. Alright" he said after a brief pause. "He can ride with me."

  
At that time I was only familiar with the horses that pulled the gypsy carts, heavy beasts with large hooves and broad flanks that only served to drag entire families behind them until they fell down to the side of the road, gleaming and sweating in their agony, animals too accustomed to the human thrust that they hardly remembered the time when great herds pastured on the prairies of England, wild and fearsome, gods of the old world. Noah’s mare seemed too delicate to bear even with the weight of one man, just as Gansey’s steed did. Ronan’s horse, on the contrary, was a well sculpted Friesian (1), held up by its sharp curved lines like an ancient obsidian idol. Black as a thunderstorm, it recalled almost instinctively the haughty figure of his owner, sharp and terrible. I wondered what kind of image Ronan would give in a distant future, when he had grown into a man as dangerous and cursed as the land he served.

  
Noah interrupted the throbbing current of my thoughts, and I found in it an excuse to take my eyes off both the horse and the rider.

  
"Ronan calls his horse “Superbia”."

  
"Superbia?"

  
"That is latin for pride and one of the canonical deadly sins" Noah explained. "Not so long ago Ronan used to ride with a man that claims to have no virtue. The other option left was Lust, and that would be quite ironical for someone who has taken a vow of chastity."

  
I frowned of curiosity, but I figured it was still too soon to ask for a reason. Ronan didn’t exactly look like an Aglionby boy —his lethal appearance put distance between him and those languid kids—, but he seemed as alive and thirsty as any of them. Noah smiled softly.

  
"Are you familiar with the Arthurian legend?"

  
"He will be as soon as he meet Gansey again" Ronan growled.

  
"I know a bit about it, yeah. The kind of things children tell to one another."

  
"You may have heard of Lancelot, then" Noah began, his voice so low and soft that it was almost a miracle that he managed to make himself heard above the noise of the horseshoes against the road. "He was Arthur’s bravest knight and dearest friend, and his strength and skills far exceeded those of any other man on England. Stories suggest that these qualities emanated from his purity, because Lancelot had taken a vow of chastity before making the promise of serving Arthur and the Round Table unconditionally. I have always thought that our man here believes part of that story."

  
"That’s bullshit" Ronan intervened. "Loving is no sin to be punished and so purity is not something to be rewarded. I don’t think it even exists in any way."

  
"I sometimes wonder how can you be so on the warpath with your own beliefs."

  
"I’m not" Ronan replied with a cold voice.

  
Noah sighted and spurred his horse, but I could felt Ronan’s back straining against my chest as we entered the castle.

 

We galloped up the drawbridge and entered the courtyard, where Gansey came to meet us with that frantic impatience, half sweet, half overwhelming, that only appear on naturally restless spirits.

  
"What took you this long?" he asked, as soon as we reached the ground.

  
Feeling the warm breath of the horse at the nape of my neck, amidst the sweat-odor of his stony thighs, I looked around. The castle towered over our heads like a set of stone needles, perhaps built by the random force of the wind around the mountains. It was much taller than anything I had ever seen, and I felt my chest suddenly filled with panic and fervor. The castle, true cathedral of the religion that is war for those who had born to wear swords and iron, those who serve only the sun and the tides, gazed back at me. I was nothing, a combination of the simplest elements who only knew life if it occurred near to dust and grass, similar to that of snakes or spiders. And they, oh they who spoke with one another in the gentle accent of one who knows the streams near the sea and has traveled the forests of the west looking for white deer, they were almost unreal figures whose reality existed so close to my hands I could almost touch it, and therefore I tried desperately to hold, unsuccessfully.

  
"Ronan’s pride, I must say" I heard Noah laughing, but I wasn’t there, I didn’t exist, I was everyone’s blind spot.

  
But Gansey looked at me and smiled again, and I felt as if my soul was truly coming back to my otherwise alienated body.

  
"I see. I am sorry if we failed to offer you a proper welcome. I must ask you to forgive my friend here. He is as rude as a man can be, you see, but you will get used to it. With time"

  
"Or he will scare you away" Noah added, with a smirk.

  
"Well, we will see."

  
"I’m sorry to interrupt and all, but I need to know. Why am I even here?" I dared to ask.

  
"Oh, oh! Don’t you know?", Gansey ran his thumb down his lower lip and looked earnestly to his peers. He seemed genuinely surprised, and I almost smiled at the scene. "Well, it seems that Lord Aglionby needs a new page of arms, bearing in mind that the present one does not seem to know how to handle all the tasks that are entrusted to him" Gansey then addressed an accusing glance at Ronan, who didn’t show any signs of feeling alluded to. "So, as you are already familiar with any sort of weapons, as well as the main pieces of an armour, I suggested him that you could assume said responsibility. If you are okay with that, of course. As you are not a member of nobility, you are not allowed into the common rooms or the one reserved to Lord Aglionby’s closest servants, but you will live among us in the castle. If you are fine with that, of course. The decision is now entirely in your hands."

  
"That's a huge thing to consider" I answered cautiously.

  
"Is it? Alright, I know it may have been a bit hasty to made you consider your options in this way, but it is a unique opportunity. If you say yes, you will not only stay here with us, but study with us, train with us. You could become a great squire, someday."

  
"A squire", Ronan commented, and I sense a hint of laughter in his words.

  
"Yes. A very honorable condition, if you ask me."

  
Everything was happening too fast and I felt dizzy, drunken by the mere fact of being there, breathing the same air as them, who were carved in the indiscretion of gold and marble. Ashamed. The way Gansey observed me, pure, in a state of unreachable grace, without any blemish, any fear, made me want to run away and hide among the mists of a distant moorland, where the honeysuckle would surely fill my loins with some old druid chant and I wouldn’t have to respond to any name or condition. Noah’s gaze was ethereal like the sky itself, and only Ronan’s seemed attached to this world, my world. Maybe because he wasn’t even paying attention to me, but directed his eyes, wrapped in flames of an intense blue, to a certain figure that I couldn’t yet identify but I would learn to fear as time passed. Who would want, after all, to look at me? Such a simple thing I was, a mere mechanism of bones and flesh, without any glow or any wonder.

  
I wondered what kind of thoughts were filling his features with that strange haze.

  
I knew what I wanted. And so, I answered.

  
"Yes. I-I mean, I'll take it. I want to be here. And I'll try my best so that Lord Aglionby doesn't regret his decision. I'll prove myself trust-worthy."

  
"Oh, I'm sure you will. And I am really glad you agreed to stay here with us" Gansey smiled, and I couldn't do anything but feel sorry for him, for the fact that a creature like him had laid his eyes on me, so heavenly he was.

  
He spoke again after a brief silence.

  
"One last thing, Adam", his lips thinned again into a barely purposeful smile and he held out his hand to shake mine. "I want you to consider us as friends."

  
"Friends", I repeated, and the word left my throat with astonishing ease, as if it had always belonged there.

  
Friends. For a moment I wondered what did that even meant for someone like me, that aspired, or foolishly dreamed of resembling the one who was now reaching out to me without even thinking that his gesture could have consequences. I knew what friendship meant for them. Knighthood. Brotherhood. Warm embraces among the freezing noise of everything else.

  
Love.

  
His hand was soft and cold when I shook it.

  
"Yes, friends", Noah nodded, his eyes bright with mischief. "Right, Ronan?"

  
"Fine", accorded Ronan. "Come, Parrish. I’ll show you around"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes on words  
> (1) a horse breed original form the Netherlands and generally used as a carriage horse due to its strength


	3. I. THE BLEEDING LANCE: on names written in marble

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Everything was blind sunlight, sweat and arteries pumping desperately in search of breath of air. I learned that languages and battles are almost the same if you chose the right words or the right weapons."  
> Adam tries to get used to his new life at Lord Aglionby's castle. Although his relationship with Ronan seems to need much more time and effort to bloom, Noah and Gansey welcome him without any trouble. Some secrets are awakening around him.

On my first night I stayed in the stables, near to the armory. Accustomed as I was to the heat of the forge, which climbed from the anvils and the stove to the children's room, I had almost forgotten the cold of the winter nights. I could hear the horses in the nearby stalls, and I wondered if their spittle had also frozen in their mouths, and if they recognized the taste of blood and iron in it. The moon was high in the sky, and it’s silver light gave things an almost ghostly appearance. It seemed clear that I wasn’t going to sleep that night.

  
Around midnight I heard something moving close to where I was lying. My skin throbbed with terror and I remained alert, eyes wide-open, ready.

  
"I supposed you wouldn’t be sleeping in this cold. Heaven forgive me, it's cold as hell out here"

  
His figure was so difficult to mistake for another that it wouldn’t have mattered if we were in broad daylight.

  
"Ronan" I murmured in relief.

  
Wild and intimidating, made of the same matter as the elongated shadows that grew at his feet, he smirked.

  
"Easy guess, smart boy."

  
I sighed and stood up slightly as he made the gesture of approaching me. I rubbed my eyes and yawned, feeling as if all the weight of the night was stuck in my bones.

  
"Why are you here, what do you want?" I asked carefully, feeling like I was trying to approach a prey animal.

  
"Tsk, I’m not going to bite you, foolish thing. I brought you blankets."

  
"Gansey sent you, huh?"

  
"No. I came outside the dormitories to say my nightly prayers a while ago and it occurred to me that you might be a little bothered by the breeze and all."

  
"Oh, oh. Sorry. I mean...thanks. Yeah. That’s very kind of you."

  
"I’m not kind, okay? Don’t get confused by this. I don’t like you and you’ll learn to stay at an adequate distance from me. But you’re Gansey's newest investment, and I should take good care that you stay as so. That means alive and healthy."

  
"I’m no one’s investment. If your seem-to-be sudden kindness is merely an act of charity, because you think I'm some kind of weak creature incapable of surviving on his own, you can save it for yourself. I'm immensely grateful for the opportunity Gansey's offered me, but I'm committed to work to repay his favor. I don't like charity. Kindness, on the other hand, is always appreciated. Anyways, now that we discussing this topic, isn’t kindness one of the canonical virtues? And isn’t pride, among all, the deadliest of sins, as it was the one committed by the devil himself? Doesn't it bother you to know that you are infected with the same disease that brought an angel of our Lord to infamy, sin and disgrace? Or maybe it isn’t pride at all but only imposture. I can't tell. Yet, at least."

  
It was clear that he didn’t expected that kind of answer, because he stood there in silence for a long time. His heavy breath and the way his whole body seemed about to jump revealed that he was not accustomed to being confronted so directly, or maybe he hadn’t even considered the idea that I might dare to speak to him in those terms.

  
"...Remember what I said, alright?" he hissed in taut voice. "And don’t mess with me. Stay out of my way, understood? Gansey may have promised you his friendship, but his heart is wider and kinder than both of ours. Besides, you look like a hungry animal, and I don’t need any more trouble."

  
"That's funny"

  
"Why?"

  
"You too look hungry, and you sure are trouble. You look nothing like Gansey or Noah."

  
"Your survival instincts are quite poor, aren't they?" he replied.

  
"On the contrary. But I'm not afraid of you."

  
"Fuck off, Parrish. Go back to sleep."

  
He throw me the blankets before leaving the stables.

 

Weeks arouse me with their tendency to fly away only half enjoyed, because that was how things worked on Aglionby Castle. When I wasn’t struggling with the basics of reading, writing and understanding the vague mechanisms of latin, pathetically hitting the ground or the weapon of my adversary again and again during the trainings, shining shields, polishing armors or repairing swords, hours seemed to elongate themselves out of my reach. Everything was blind sunlight, sweat and arteries pumping desperately in search of breath of air. I learned that languages and battles are almost the same if you chose the right words or the right weapons.

  
Noah and Gansey welcomed me in their group. We went down to the armoury between classes because the reduced space there created kind of a cave sensation, that made the temperature stay more or less stable during the day; and we talked about things that used to be so out of my world that I haven´t even realized they existed until then. Poetry, astronomy, mathematics, calligraphy; the only voices capable of waking the unknown and making my own soul bloom in both fear and ecstasy. The fact that they allowed me into their lectures and make me a participant of that sacred joy that was knowledge, as well as of any other instruction the aspiring-to-be knights received, awaked in me feelings that back then I decided to denominate as happiness.

But while my eyes got accustomed to the darkness and started to see the world as something far more complex that I’ve ever imagined, I began to wonder if there would be a way to get higher, to access to the privilege they had by birth, to abandon everything I had been before and look a little bit more that the beautiful, enchanted creatures that filled the halls of the castle with their murmurs and laughter. They were princes and I was still a vagabond, living both their life and mine, always on the edge between two mutually exclusive dimensions.  
Both Noah and Gansey used to complain a lot about those subjects; boys raised in abundance couldn’t conceive theoretical knowledge as more than a misuse of matter. Ronan never appeared in his lectures; Gansey told me that he dominated latin well enough to read any book in the castle, but that he lacked the curiosity. Gansey was conscious, however, that if he wanted to be a knight someday he would first learn to decode the stars. He was genuinely worried about his friend, in a way that appeared to me to be a little bit naive for a boy his age.

  
Anyone who had ever seen Ronan knew he had more than enough to be a knight, or whatever he wanted to. His terrible, honest appearance revealed an absolutely free will and I believed that if he dared to smile he could have made the stars line up just for him. He embodied the essence of a warrior, which only existed back in the time of the old cults. Armours, oxidizing in the shady gloom of the armory, appeared too vulgar to me compared to the lines traced by God between the silver lights of the firmament. Battles are too human when you gaze at the stars, and I’ve always despise my condition intensely enough to choose the later. Neither Gansey nor Noah understood the wonders lying beneath the things they were learning. But I, who had nothing on my side nor on my pockets, found them fascinating enough to listen carefully to what their words, and even dared to drown my gaze into the skies. I had no intention of becoming a soldier. I wanted to be wise and unknowable.

  
Poetry was empty when recited by a frustrated student, but I liked it because it spoke of battles I would never win and the kind of admiration that is never returned.

  
"These are love poems" Noah explained once, with the languor of a bored scholar that was, experience would show, almost his natural state. "But there is no love in this, no passion! There’s only beauty when it comes from God and only a woman if she is touched by angels and therefore saved from any sin. To hell with the knight’s pain, he is only in love with his rosary!"

  
For some reason I couldn’t yet explain, I thought of Ronan, and my heart jumped in disagreement.

  
"Oh, dear Lord. Be holy, Noah" Gansey interceded with the sweetness of a caring brother.

  
"You don’t need God nor angels or rosaries to find it holy. It’s all there is. I like the idea that an earthly being can provoke such movement." I interrupted.

  
"What an interesting perspective!" Gansey giggled, his eyebrows frowned with a mix of curiosity and delight. "Can you explain that?"

  
"If you put God aside, if you convince yourself that they are only two human beings, the poem then creates an illusion of…possibility, as if love could really be that intense yet so subtle, so…carefree."

  
"Love? Nonsense" Noah replied. "Love is merely an idea we have created to embellish reality. People marry because of power, money, or both. This is all fiction and aesthetic, Adam."

  
"It’s not like any of us could really rely on love. We carry heavy weights upon our shoulders." added Gansey.

  
"You, maybe. I don’t have a name, neither lands nor money. Anyways. I’m not talking about the kind of love that leads to marriage, but something deeper."

  
"Something deeper? Is there anything deeper?"

  
"Devotion, maybe" Noah suggested. "Are you talking about that? I think that solves this discussion. Yes, you ignore God, but merely because you are placing your significant other where God used to be."

  
I didn’t reply. I haven’t found the words yet, or maybe I hadn’t felt enough of anything to understand what my soul was whispering. After all, my body had only experienced the rejection of self that comes from a violent atmosphere. Since I was a little kid, too young to know storms were good for wheat or that death was inevitable, I had been told repeatedly that I was nothing, and that things as simple as thoughts, affection, or kindness weren’t affordable for a boy like me.

  
"Yeah, perhaps. I don’t really know, you see. I talk non-sense."

  
"Oh, don’t say that. Your ideas are far more interesting that anyone else’s here. I just hadn't expected you to be such a romantic" Gansey rejoiced, and his graceful smile put an end to our conversation.

  
"Well, that might be because soon-to-be knights don’t have much in their heads but straw" Noah agreed.

  
They both laughed, and I stared at them in silence. Although Gansey's laughter resembled the crackling of the noble metals against the anvil, a refined and clean sound, Noah’s was disturbing. It was a kind of muted howl, a hissing noise, like the wind piercing an empty ribcage. His friends might be used to it, but it was indeed strange to hear how that sound emanated from something that was supposed to be alive.

Noah must had noticed my apprehension, because he gave me a deep look as we advanced through the courtyard to the main hall.

  
"I thought you knew it already" he said.

  
"Know what?"

  
"That I am dead."

  
"That’s a joke, isn’t it?"

  
He smiled delicately as only he could, but I felt a certain bitterness in his misty eyes and in the way he said:

  
"Yes, Adam, of course. Just kidding"


	4. I. THE BLEEDING LANCE: on names written in steel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Honor, for [Gansey], was something that came by blood. Honor, for me, was something I had to build out of nothing"  
> While the rumors about his presence start to become loud around Adam, he encounters the most hideous creature in the castle: Joseph Kavinsky.

It was not until long after my arrival, towards the beginning of April, that rumors of my presence there —not completely fortuitous, and surely an insult to the sacred institution that they devoted their lives to— began to spread among the boys of the castle. They didn't talk about Gansey, whose golden shadow belonged among them and was protected from every judgement by his own condition. Fine beasts recognize each other. They murmured about me and my dubious origins, about the way my back was bent with the curve of labor, my eyes rejected the light like cold coal, my skin hid the blood that flowed beneath its olive surface. Gansey told me not to listen to them; they were just spoiled kids with nothing serious to do but to rejoice in their indolence. But it seemed impossible for me to ignore the half truth of their words. I still had the impression of not having paid some required debt, and I felt like an impostor every time I walked through those corridors, escorted by Gansey and Noah who, despite their differences, represented the same distant ideal.

  
"Stand by my side, always" he warned me, however.

  
"I'll stand for myself, Gansey. I'll learn how, the hard way if it's meant to be. Just don't get involved."

  
It was during those days that I began to notice that beneath the radiant and sympathetic appearance of my friend laid some sort of class solidarity, which pushed him light years away from where I was, and closer to those who despised me. He was incapable of understanding why I wished to detach myself sufficiently from his Influence to demonstrate him that I alone could defend my ground and my word. Honor, for him, was something that came by blood. Honor, for me, was something I had to build out of nothing.

  
"Adam Parrish, army of one" Noah laughed in response.

  
It is curious, when looked in retrospective, that to acknowledge survival as my greatest talent I had to encounter the devil first. Angels like Gansey may lead the way, but there's nothing better to heal a wound or to feed a wasteland than fire and ashes. I can't say I'm grateful. I never thanked my father for teaching me what pain looked like, and I'll never feel anything but hated towards the boy who showed me that I was stronger than I thought, and that I could grow kinder and better out of the deepest misery. A man is too little to forgive. Let's leave that to God.

The lad in question was feared by most, and admired by none. His words flooded the rooms like a dark and corrosive fluid, adapting to all minds, setting fire to any idea.One could hear the whisper of decaying bodies every time he left a room. He had a rare talent, the capacity of being both charming and fatal. He had the appearance of a bastard and the legitimization of a long bloodline of warriors and princes. That was the boy who approached me the rainy afternoon of the first day of April, when I was busy picking up from the ground the wooden swords we used in training, suddenly abandoned there because of the storm. My uniform was wet enough to make any vigorous movement almost impossible to perform, and its colors looked as faded as my own image.

  
"Oh, if it isn't everyone's favorite topic impersonated" I heard him exclaiming, close enough to make me shiver. "I thought you would be, like, /something else/. It may be the lighting, but you don’t seem such a big deal."

  
I turned around. He was smiling, but the way his lips arched, the mellow accents in his voice, reminded me of my father, in the way my father had always reminded me of a snake. My whole body was in tension, prepared for an imminent attack.  
He wasn’t alone. His inseparable horde of murderers and thugs followed him closely, and I knew with certainty that something terrible was going to happen. They were as beautiful as they were terrifying. Prokopenko; a bloodhound with a dangerous glance; Jiang, as impenetrable as steel and almost as deadly; Swan, a black totem brought from the land of human sacrifices; Skov, a blond angel who couldn’t help laughing at the miracle of my fear. And finally, him. Joseph Kavinsky was the king of shadows by own right, and he didn't hesitate to prove that.

  
"Not speaking to me, huh? Funny. Look, little Dick may be a fool for you, but sooner or later someone must tell him that he has no right of allowing scum into this castle. Don't take it personal, darling. I just love the status quo."

  
I frowned and took a deep breath. The rain slid down my face to my chin; it was hard to keep my eyes open. His smile, delicious as the honeysuckles that open their thorns to birds, wide enough to be lethal, kept its place as if the forces of evil had descended to Earth just to cut it from his entrails and put it there. Raven hair, ugly expression, and still he managed to look as some sort of archangel, savage, vicious, a creature of another creed. If there were words to describe a fear deeper than fear, a disgust deeper than disgust, a rage deeper than rage, I would write them down right after his name, and next to my heart.

  
"I serve Lord Aglionby. I'm a page, just like you. I thank Gansey for everything he's done for me, but I'm not his servant, and never will. I’m making myself useful here. Actually, I’m a little busy right now, so it’d be kind if you and your boys could leave right away. You are kinda bothering me" I replied, in a mild tone. "Don't take it personal, but I hope you have considered what would happen to you if they started kicking the scum out of this castle."

  
He gave me a contemptuous look, and his sudden burst of laughter sounded like a war horn.

  
"I have wondered many times during my life why you plebs are always so prideful. Let me tell you something, boy: you are a pet. A whim, a crush. But deep down you'll always be a mutt. The sooner you realize that, the better. A page like me, you said? Oh, no, my dear. Unlike you, I'll never serve. I've been raised to rule, and when I finish my instruction here I'll go back to the high circles, where I belong, and where I'm allowed to do as I please. A right I acquired by birth, in case you haven't noticed. All you are asked to do in this life is to crouch your head in front of your natural masters, I mean, my kind."

  
"Never think, not for a moment, that stray dogs have masters of any kind. I wasn't born to be loyal to your people."

  
He raised his eyebrows. He didn’t seemed impressed, not even offended. His monstrous mouth only held a grim of morbid curiosity, like the one of a child who tried to dismember a wasp for the first one, enchanted by the possibility of being bitten by something so small.

  
"Beaten dogs learn loyalty through fear. And you will, too, if necessary."

  
I stared back at him. I let the rain pour into my bones, reminding me that I was still there, that I was alive, that I had a body made of flesh that could be wounded and bleed to death. But there was no fear left in me. I held my condition in such a careless way that I had lost all interest in regard of myself. My body was merely a means to an end.

  
"Maybe those in power shouldn't reassure its position by attacking those who have none. It's kind of contradictory, you see. Only those whose weakness overwhelms them need violence in order to make others believe that they are the powerful ones."

  
I knew I should have swallowed my words seconds before his hands closed around my throat. He approached, slowly, bright as a spear in the corner of my eye, as I struggled to catch my breath, desperately scratching the skin of his hands in a vain attempt to get rid of his hold. I felt his lips moving softly next to my ear, and I tried to decode his words among the smell of blood and roses that emanated from him. A pinch of sulfur, and I'd be convinced for good that he some sort of satanic creature.

  
"Weak, you said? Let’s teach you what it really means to be weak, shall we?" he let go of me, and I retraced a few steps, bending over myself as I tried to stand on my feet.

Rain was beginning to subside, but I thought that if there was really a god ruling our lives, he sure was merciless.

He turned to his boys.

  
"I want him on his knees."

  
I remember the way I fought back, like a wild beast, all claws and beak. And the wetness of the ground in the knees when I surrendered, and the feeling of dizziness that preceded the wasted glow of a dagger. And screaming so loud that heaven itself must had heard me, because for a moment everything went silent and was gradually replaced by a heavy hum. Hell trembled underfoot.

I must had fainted, because when I opened my eyes the rain was long gone and Ronan was keeping Kavinsky’s knife on the other side of a heavy sword, without any apparent effort, because the latter seemed to be enjoying the whole scene. I had been left there, in the ground, like a worthless burden. The boys had fled, and Noah was pressing a rough cloth to my left ear.

  
"Adam. Adam. I’m so sorry" he whispered.

  
Maybe he wasn’t whispering at all, but his voice seemed distant, low as a breeze, like something from a dream. I awoke to the sore pain that laid under his hands, and I reached for my ear. I expected the wound, but not the complete absence of what used to be there. I looked down at my fingers, and they were dripping wet from blood.

  
"Don’t touch it, Adam. You’ll only make things worse."

  
"How could he possibly make things any worse!?" Ronan replied, his words drowned in the blind anger of his eyes.

  
"Oh, dear. When did you become so caring, Lynch? Has this hideous churl (1) stole your heart too? I never took you for a fool, darling" the mere sight of Kavinsky’s smirk was enough to make me sick. I stirred, trying to get up, but a feverish nausea brought me back to the ground almost instantly.

  
"Another word and I’ll rip that viper tongue of yours out of your damn mouth. Out of my sight, K."

  
"What a pity we two have to end this way. You have always been my favorite strumpet (2)" he exhaled an exaggerated sigh and straightened his clothes before dropping the knife. His rain-soaked cloak clung to his body as he walked away.

  
It took Ronan a while to return the sword to its sheath. Rage made his hands shake, but when he knelt next to us the expression in his face was blank. I wondered if he felt in some way as wounded and horrified as I did.

Something terrible must have happened in his previous life for Kavinsky to respect him enough to avoid a direct confrontation, and for Ronan to remain calm in the face of his insults. Ronan was himself a secret, a riddle. A part of me held a burning desire to dig inside that shadow. The rest was just tired of being so reckless.

  
"You are crying" he commented, noticing my intent look. "It makes you look pathetic."

  
"Ronan, he has just lost his ear! It wouldn't hurt you to show some affection" Noah whined.

  
"Someone has to tell Gansey" he shrugged.

  
A tense silence followed his response, in which Noah seemed about to say something inadequate at least a couple of times.

  
"I will. I can’t take care of him for so much longer, anyways" Noah finally gave up. He looked almost sorry for the fact that his skin was cold enough to burn my own, even through the thick cloth he was holding.

  
"Run then."

  
I didn’t hear the flutter of his clothes as he sat up, and no matter how hard I tried to distinguish some sound, he walked away with the same noise as if he had simply vanished. Tears rolled down my cheeks like waves on a crust of salt. I couldn’t remember the last time I had cried, but the way my eyes ached from hopelessness was somehow tied to the agonizing way my mother used to look down at me, the low crash of my bones under my father's belt. My childhood years crossed my mind like a flood, and all I wanted was to tell that boy, who was then bandaging my face, trying to keep all the pieces together, that there wasn’t anything left there to save.

Leave it, I screamed, I don’t need your help, go away. Go rot you and those alike you, those who have everything. He looked at me as if I was nothing and again and again I believed him, as I had believed every word Kavinsky had spitted back at me.

But then he carefully lifted me from the ground and put his arm around my shoulders and pain turned into something intimate, something that could rest on a friendly shoulder if given the opportunity. I heard his heart beating close to mine and I knew that, somehow, he shared my despair. How could anyone so dark be the first to touch me without causing a wound, and how can someone so violent hold me in such a soft way? I let him drag me into the castle.  
While the castle’s physician examined what was left of my ear, I stared back at Ronan, who was waiting at the edge of the door. His expression was, again, like a rune I was unable, or maybe just not allowed, to read. He raised his eyebrows.

  
"What’s your deal with that boy?" I managed to articulate. Each word sent a pang of pain to the top of my jaw, just where Kavinsky’s dagger had tasted my flesh for the first time. But the question had been eating me up since I woke up in the training yard.

  
"He’s no longer a boy, just like the devil is no longer an angel. He has abandoned all faith and aspires to kill God. Use the right words. Bastard. Criminal. Etc" his voice was plain, but I heard war.

  
War. War. War.

  
Rebirth.

  
"My lad, please, be holy" the physician intervened.

  
"I only speak the truth, God forgive me. And you, clever boy, watch out. You think you know fire because you helped at the forge, but you don’t— boys like Joseph Kavinsky are nothing but pain. You get too close, you burn. Understood?"

  
"I know pain."

  
"I can tell that now. I only hope you've learnt your lesson."

  
"I think I should thank you."

  
"Don't. I didn't do what I did because of you."

  
"Every time you say that it sounds less like the truth."

  
He didn't even bother to answer, but he stayed there, his eyes lost elsewhere, waiting for me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes on words  
> (1) a person of low birth, a peasant  
> (2) a prostitute


	5. I. THE BLEEDING LANCE: on names written in time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I was probably too simple, too insignificant, to measure the scope of their ambitions, but I knew for sure that if there was really a fate stored for me, they were going to play an important role on it."  
> After his unfortunate encounter with Kavinsky, Adam feels hopeless. But even in the most bitter situations, a revelation may open the door to friendship and fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to change certain things in this chapter because I want the plot to develop differently of how I originally planned. I hope you all understand. This fanfic will keep updating for now on, so pay attention! Your local medieval trash is back, hah!

At night, we met in the kitchen. The sounds seemed to move away from me or belong to a sphere far from my reality, a world that was blurred beyond empty glasses and dishes, among the shadows of servants swarming aimlessly between the stoves. Who was I, perhaps forever wounded on the edge of one life and the dream of the next? Both realities allied themselves to despise me, and the company of my friends, who whispered about something that, I suppose, they were trying to pretend that was none of my business, looked like the ever-present ghost of that perception. I wanted them to either go away or comfort me, although I knew beforehand that I wasn’t allowed to demand such things.

 

I buried my face in my hands and listened to the throbbing pulse of my missing ear until Gansey’s words, audible now that he was increasingly exalted with the conversation, caught my attention.

 

“I told you, that boy is danger, that boy is no good. And you promised to take care of that, that you would talk to him and make sure that he never crossed us again. You, you promised me not so long ago that he wouldn’t disturb us another time. Maybe what you have on him isn’t as powerful as you think, or maybe I shouldn’t have trusted you in the first place. I don’t know, Ronan, at this point I just don’t know what to believe. You have failed me, not only as a friend but as a man of his word.”

 

There was such a harshness in his words, a feeling that Gansey usually seemed to be completely lacking in, that even my heart shrank from guilt. I directed Ronan a discrete gaze, and found him sinking in the thick shadow of his own eyes, lost themselves somewhere far away from us all. I asked myself, as many times before and as many times after that night, what would have happened to that boy to make him so dark, so painful to look at. Something in the depths of my own self felt a kind of violent solidarity, as if there was a bond between us that could only come from the certainty of having shared misery, and the perception of being destined to live a common fate. Maybe the two of us were somehow alone in this vast world, and I craved the day in which I could look at him straight in the eyes and say “We are one; I know your pain and understand your duel”. Still, there were too many edges in my soul and too many secrets in his; we weren’t just two men looking at each other, but the reflection of all our differences.

 

“Gansey” I took a deep breath and tried to put my thoughts together. When I finally began to speak, I felt as if I was unleashing some knot that had been tied around my throat for too long. “Don’t go so hard on him. He’s the reason I’m here now.”

 

“Adam, I appreciate your intention, but this isn’t about you.”

“How? How isn’t this about me?” I explode, and placing both hands on the table in front of me I raised my chin for the first time in months and looked fiercely at Gansey. “Besides, I won’t stay here to see how other carry a guilt that it’s not their own. I don’t know what’s going on between you two, or between Ronan and Kavinsky, and if I have to be fair, I don’t even care. There’s a lot in this world I don’t understand, but if I know something, that’s how to survive. I’ve been fighting for my life since the day I was born. First rule of survival: stay away from boys like Joseph Kavinsky. Because they are trouble, because they are bastards, because they can be lethal without even trying. He has everything I lack: privilege, freedom, his will as his only ruler. Boys like that will always do as they please. The pain of the underdog always offers a nice entertainment. It’s nature. It’s the fight between those who have everything and those who have nothing. It’s the side of the story that always remains untold. But what happened today has also been an example of true chivalry. “ _To defend the weak and defenseless […] To eschew unfairness, meanness, and deceit_ ”. Isn’t that what the whole thing is about? So no, don’t blame Ronan. It’s quite probable that at this point I owed him my life, or at least the opportunity to remain here, in this place, among you, without anything changing too much. He did what he had to do, and that was administrating justice when there was none. So you either go throw those words back to Kavinsky, or you shut up.”

 

Silence settled between us like a heavy, dense scent, a mixture of apples about to ripen and words we knew we weren’t allowed to spoke to each other, not yet, not there. Gansey looked like he was battling against his own blood, like his body could no longer hold all the sharp sides of a reality that was meant to be simple. He was built like a church of glass and the shadow of my own body had suddenly turned all his doors into mirrors, and the destruction was evident, and the dusty corners were starting to get revealed, and Gansey struggled to stand his ground in such an unknown land.

 

“He has a point, Gansey” Noah intervened.

 

Ronan was staring at me, his cold eyes dissecting every inch of my body, razor-like, a raven examining an open wound, searching for the best way to satisfy his hunger.

 

“How come you are such a walking tragedy?” For once, I could sense in his words the vague notes of genuine curiosity.

 

God, I was exhausted. I stared back at him, my hands buried again in my lap, my whole body a reflection of a dead fire, and I smiled softly, as if to say, go on, bury your claws on my flesh, tear me apart if you please, search my loins with that sharp peak of yours, show me your rage, devour me; you haven’t stopped me from fighting your battles.

 

“I’m a pleb and a rom. As simple as that.”

 

“A rom” Gansey dared to wonder, in a low voice, “you mean a gypsy?”

 

“Yes, that’s what your people named us.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Leave it, Gansey” Ronan preached. “I’m suddenly not in the mood for speeches.”

 

Noah burst into laughter. I haven’t noticed it yet, but in the obscure saffron light of the kitchen, he was merely a spectre, something not quite there, a fault in the landscape, as if the space around him had suddenly formed a sort of hallucination. I remembered then what he had said to me that afternoon we spent together in the armory — “ _I thought you knew that already […] That I am dead._ ” And yet he was a playful spirit, a kid almost, vivacious and shallow in appearance, with a sort of veiled sadness underneath, a melancholy rooted to the core of the earth, deeper than any of us could come to guess.

 

“Well” Gansey shook his head and turned back to me, “I see what you are saying, and I’m sorry. It’s true, maybe you are even right after all. But our world has rules too, you see. Kavinsky is meant to inherit, among other things, a powerful army. That makes him a powerful ally for everyone living under this castle and therefore untouchable. Lord Aglionby won’t protect you from his rage once it bursts.”

 

“No matter how crooked Kavinsky is, he’s worth far more than a peasant’s life” Ronan added.

 

“Yes. It’s sad, I know ―” Gansey started, but finding nothing in my face that denoted anything close to grief, he came back to the topic at hand. “In short, I think the best option is to keep you away for a while. And ― how do I even phrase this, huh?”

 

“Just tell him right away, Gansey” Noah urged him to continue.

 

Gansey sighed, and it took a few seconds before his eyes made their way back to me, the invisible trace of a thousand versions of the same unspeakable truth already falling from his lips like white light, honey, a chamber of gold about to be revealed to me, or maybe dripping blood and sore pain, poison flying through the space between the throat and the tongue. I didn’t know what to expect.

 

“How much do you know about King Arthur?”

 

Surely, not that. I stared blankly at him and blinked in confusion.

 

“Old tales from an older age in which the world was noble” I mumbled. “Something that happened too long ago to matter.”

 

“Have you ever heard of the Holy Graal?” (1)

 

“What exactly are you trying to tell me?”

 

“Answer me, please.”

 

“I know Arthur sent his knights to search for it, and that they never found it. Probably it wasn’t even real.”

 

“Oh, but it was real” Gansey started, and silence reigned in the room as if the whole world has held its breath to peer into the conversation. “The Holy Graal is more than a simple grail, it holds the essence of Life and Death, the blood of Jesus Christ himself, some authors even venture … The thing is, it is also more than a story shared by the fire on a winter night. I know it because I have a debt that needs to be repaid. I need you to be quiet and sit very still, this is a secret, and I am trusting you to keep it: I died once. And in the dream of death a voice told me that I had been chosen, and all those times I had been told I was destined for great things seemed to be no more than empty memories, meaningless words thrown into air; everything was eclipsed by that extraordinary revelation: that I was going to live for something, that I had a mission to fulfill. A road opened abruptly on the inhospitable horizon of my existence, and with the clarity of truth, I saw a life unfold before me, a life that no longer belonged to me alone, but to the future of all men. My resurrection had a price: I had to find the Holy Graal. That old quest, that had been left abandoned after Sir Galahad’s death (2), first, and then after King Arthur’s defeat (3), was mine to continue. You cannot imagine the joy that filled my heart when I found myself on the ground, breathing again, and the weight of responsibility that lies on my shoulders since that day, eight years ago. Ronan and Noah came only afterwards, and they joined my mission with an enthusiasm and a faith of which I cannot but be grateful. Now is your turn. You can choose your path in this life, Adam Parrish. You can follow us in this quest or step aside, but I warn you that if you pass this point, there will be no possible return.”

 

I gasped for air. That was too much. For a moment, I felt the temptation to burst out laughing, convinced that I was being subjected to some kind of joke. But it was then when I stopped and observed their faces, and beyond that halo of glimmering light that always surrounded them, passed the trace of noble metals that led to their souls, I saw three boys who shared a common dream. Boys just my age, the gift of youth in their cheeks as fruits still unripe, boys who knew how to play to words and swords but weren’t that different from me after all. Yes, I was probably too simple, too insignificant, to measure the scope of their ambitions, but I knew for sure that if there was really a fate stored for me, it lied among those boys.

 

I tried. I did. I tried to look for one single reason to decline their invitation. But in the end, the only thing that stood beyond my doubt were those faces. A rare crew, they all were. Even more fascinating now that I could observe them from a short distance. And they wanted me, of all people, to be part of what they were willing to become. Explorers, adventurers. The essence of knighthood must be something close to the image of their open arms and clear, vivacious eyes.

 

I was too tired to smile, but I nodded.

 

“Alright” I said, “count me in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) the holy graal: also known as the holy grail, is a motif in the arthurian literature that appears inherently linked with the french cycle, that means figures such as lancelot, sir galahad, sir bors the younger or sir percival, depending on the sources. it's a vessel that contains something of great value, that it's supposed to serve as a cure-all or as the essence of life itself. its interpretations combine both the celtic mythology and the christian traditions surrounding the eucharist, suggesting that it could contain the blood of jesus christ, collected directly from his wounds while he was agonizing on the cross. the celtic origins of the symbol are still uncertain, some suggest that it can even have viking / norse roots. 
> 
> (2) sir galahad's death: the arthurian literature mentions at least four knight as linked to the graal's quest. the first one is lancelot, who was considered unworthy of the grail because of his affair with guinevere. sir bors abandoned the quest during the battle of tintagel because of this loyalty towards lancelot and the king. sir percival is told to have witnessed the graal, but failed to obtain it. that leaves us with galahad, lancelot's son, a character created merely to resume his father's mission. there are a lot ( believe me, A LOT ) of versions of this story, but the most accepted one is that which assures that galahad actually came to obtain the holy graal, and died by doing so.
> 
> (3) king arthur's defeat: king arthur and his knights, and perhaps the whole institution that the round table had come to mean, were defeated by mordred and his army in tintagel. mordred, arthur's only son, died by arthur's hand.


End file.
